


Strange New World

by salmonskinroll



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Bucky Barnes Is a Good Bro, Coping, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-28
Updated: 2018-11-28
Packaged: 2019-09-01 22:34:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,504
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16774246
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/salmonskinroll/pseuds/salmonskinroll
Summary: Everyone comes back, eventually, because the good guys always do in the end. But when you've died, how do you ever come back from that, really? How do you come home to the people who mourned you and look them in the eye?It's supposed to get easier. Peter Parker is still waiting.





	Strange New World

It’s supposed to get easier. Peter knows this.   
He feels eyes on him at every turn, analyzing him, waiting for him to snap. They’re all breathing down his neck, and he knows they just want to catch him if he falls but he doesn’t think they realize that they’re the ones pushing him over the ledge. 

When he sees May for the first time after Titan, he cries. He can’t help it; she looks the same as she always has. Her hair is shiny and she smells like laundry detergent when he buries his face in her sweater. She strokes his hair and murmurs a nonsensical string of comforting words: “Honey, honey, honey…”   
Together, they go home.

Peter doesn’t recognize it.   
It’s like watching someone else’s life, sometimes. Everything is fine, but then he wakes up in the night with no air in his lungs and sits tangled in his sheets until his sweat dries and the first rays of a dusty sunrise filter in through his blinds. Everything is okay until May leaves for work and plants a kiss against his forehead, gentle and bittersweet, and whispers “I love you,” and Peter remembers that he was dead before, and that May never got to say goodbye. Everything that was once normal is now slightly distorted, a sick parody, a whispered reminder of dust under the hot Titan sun.

Tony can’t look him in the eyes anymore.   
He thinks maybe that ought to sting more than it does, be he isn’t really disappointed. He isn't really anything.   
He doesn’t call the billionaire Mr. Stark anymore. The name sticks uncomfortably on his tongue, unwilling to cooperate. He calls him Tony, and Tony doesn’t stop him or contradict him. In fact, he thinks the older man might be just a little bit relieved. "Mr. Stark" sounds wrong now, sounds different when it isn’t delivered with the breathy enthusiasm of a teenage boy who doesn’t know how it feels to be gutted from the inside out. "Mr. Stark" sounds young and faithful and everything that Peter isn’t sure he’ll ever be again.   
"Mr. Stark" tastes the same on his lips as "I’m sorry". He reminds himself that they’re just words now.   
Peter doesn’t remember exactly what he said as he was dying – all he remembers is a jumble of words and breath and panic, clawing at Mr. Stark’s shoulders, the overwhelming, unstoppable pain of becoming nothingness. But he remembers I’m sorry, mostly because it was one of the first things out of his mouth when he first woke up again, still in pain and confused, but alive. “I’m sorry,” he’d gasped, and the mechanic had gone stiff, unable to respond, and simply gripped him tighter.   
Peter bites his tongue and clenches his fists and reminds himself that he is still alive. And this world that he’s returned too is a little strange, a little off kilter, but he thinks of the burn of ash in his lungs and remembers that there are worse things. 

He doesn’t talk so much anymore, either. That’s another difference.   
It used to be, when Peter was excited, he could talk for hours on end. He and Ned would stay up late into the night debating the merits and pitfalls of George Lucas’s CGI additions to the original Star Wars trilogy. He would babble to Happy from the back of the car about the decathlon team, or relate to an amused Mr. Stark stories of the latest disasters in his high school shop class. Everything was awesome, or amazing, or else it was the worst thing in the world – there was no in between. He would wake up with a new breakout on his face and it would ruin his day. A good grade or a comment from MJ could brighten his whole morning.   
May used to call them his teenager goggles. “When you’re a teenager, everything feels like the most important thing that will ever happen to you,” she had told him wisely from her spot curled up on the couch with a pudding cup in her hands. “High school…God, I remember making out with Billy Davidson under the bleachers in eleventh grade and feeling like it was the best moment of my life -”  
Peter had wrinkled his nose in disgust and shoved his fingers in his ears. “La-la-la-”  
May had thrown her spoon at his head. 

But things don’t matter to him like that anymore. His teenager goggles have been ripped from his head, and he hasn’t felt the ache of those emotions in a long time. Anxiety no longer twists in his gut whenever he hears the sound of hushed voices in a dark alley. May’s affectionate needling at dinner no longer makes him laugh. The premiere of the newest Star Wars movie comes out, and he goes, because Ned asks him to, and watches it with glazed eyes, eating popcorn without tasting it, his body on autopilot.   
He doesn’t babble anymore. Laughter is rare. Tears are even more so. It wouldn’t bother him, except people keep telling him that it’s okay, and let it out, and May has him go to therapy, which is basically just forty-five minutes of a woman with a clipboard telling him that he has to feel whatever he has to feel.   
He nods and smiles faintly and wonders if he ought to tell her that he doesn’t really feel anything at all. 

He patrols again for the first time about a month after coming back. Tony never says anything, but Peter can tell that he thinks it's still too soon. It's not the same suit that he wore on Titan, but he doesn't think it would make a difference even if it was. Peter might have been dressed in his suit when he died, but his mask was off and his eyes were full of tears and he died as Peter Parker, not Spider-Man. Maybe that is why it feels so easy for him to slip back into the suit one night, after May has gone to bed; maybe that's why once the mask goes on, he feels a bizarre pang of something almost like relief. He isn't Peter Parker under here, and he doesn't have to be. With the mask on, he doesn't belong to this apartment which is suddenly too small and too bright in all the wrong places. With the mask on, he isn't anyone's nephew, or anyone's ward, or anyone's anything. 

One night, he’s out patrolling by the East River, near the border from Queens into Brooklyn territory, when he runs into Bucky. The Winter Soldier is standing in a back alley behind a karaoke bar, beating the hell out of some guy in a god-awful Hawaiian shirt.   
Peter wonders vaguely what the guy did to deserve it. Maybe it was the shirt. It was probably the shirt.   
He hesitates briefly, watching the scene play out. Bucky’s muscles are tense. He’s dressed only in black sweatpants and a sweat-stained gray t-shirt, as if this is just another part of his daily workout regime, but what little Peter can discern of his expression in the darkened alley is focused and grim. He doesn't seem angry - just concentrated. He's channelling some sort of serious mid-battle zen. As Peter watches, Bucky's sleeve rides up and his metal arm gleams in the moonlight.   
Peter remembers that arm, remembers the weight of it in his fist during the battle in Germany. He remembers, quite clearly, thinking "this is the best day of my life" seconds before being body-slammed by Falcon into a wall.   
Teenager goggles strike again. God, Peter feels so old.   
Bucky slams his fist into the guy’s face on last time and drops him like a rag doll. Peter has no idea what the dude did to deserve such harsh treatment, but ultimately, he decides to trust the Winter Soldier’s call on this one. After all, the guy does have Cap’s, and even Tony’s (grudging) endorsement. Peter’s only met Bucky twice, and both times it was too brief to exchange more than a few fumbling words, but he knows enough to know that Bucky is one of the good guys. After all, he's been living with Steve in Brooklyn, and if you can't trust Captain America's roommate, who can you trust?   
“You gonna sit there all night, or you gonna help me out?” Bucky growls suddenly, his volume rising above the murmur he’s been using to threaten the perp.   
Peter nearly jumps out of his skin. “I – oh, oh – yeah, yeah, sorry, sure –” fumbling awkwardly with surprise, he flips off the rooftop where he’s been crouching and neatly webs Bucky’s perp to the stone wall of the bar. The guy whimpers.   
“How long did you know I was there?” Peter asks.   
Bucky raises his eyebrows, looking far too amused for someone who just broke a dude’s nose with one blow. “The whole time,” he deadpans.   
“…Oh,” Peter blinks. “I, uh. Sorry.”   
“Don’t be sorry,” Bucky tells him seriously, turning to meet Peter’s eyes with a level gaze for the first time, “be sneakier.” 

A half hour later, they’re sitting on a rooftop about a block away from the crime scene and listening to the distant wail of sirens, eating Chinese food. Bucky’s staring out at the horizon as if he didn’t just beat a guy’s face in, and Peter’s rolled his mask up to his nose.   
He’s still a feeling little numb over the fact that this is the Winter Soldier, sitting next to him casually, a stray piece of cashew chicken stuck in his beard. Bucky seems completely at ease, and has tucked right into his meal as if chilling with vigilantes and eating Asian food is just, like, one of those things, you know. Chinese with Spider-Man? Must be a Tuesday.   
“So,” Peter offers finally, broaching the silence, “what exactly did that dude do to you?”   
Bucky shoots him an irritable look and continues chewing.   
“’kay,” Peter mumbles awkwardly, taking a halfhearted bite from his eggroll, “take your time, man. No rush. No pressure.”   
There is a beat of uncomfortable silence.   
"Was it the karaoke bar? Did he pick a bad song?"   
Bucky swallows and sighs, exasperated. “You’re a little bit of a spaz, kid, you know that?”   
“I’ve been told,” Peter responds flippantly. “Don’t change the topic.””   
“There wasn’t a topic. We were being quiet.”   
“You were being quiet. I’ve tried to start a conversation, like, fourteen times.”   
“Yeah. I noticed. You’re not exactly subtle. Watch it, you’re spilling your sauce everywhere.”   
“Oh.” Peter shifts his legs, wiping it away and feeling a phantom pang of embarrassment, but, like everything else, it’s a muted emotion. Muffled. The kind he could easily miss entirely if he wasn’t looking for it. “Sorry.”  
Bucky shoots him a look, but it’s a little less cold this time. “You say that a lot.”   
“I mean it,” Peter replies, instinctively.   
“I know. That’s the problem.” They lapse again into silence, and then Bucky wordlessly offers Peter an eggroll. Peter’s not really hungry anymore, but he takes it anyway, knowing that the food isn’t the important part. “You talk to Stark lately?”   
Peter shrugs. He has and he hasn’t. They’ve talked, as in, they’ve exchanged words, but they haven’t really said anything worth saying and they both know it. “A little. Are you two…I mean, is he…? Are you two good now?”  
Bucky snorts a little, the first inkling of a smile glimmering somewhere behind his beard. “We get along okay. He's...he doesn't like me much, but he keeps a cap on it, mostly." He sighs a little wistfully. "For Steve's sake more than mine."   
“Mr. Stark is a good man.” Peter says it without thinking, but once the words are out he finds he doesn’t want to take them back. “He knows what matters and what doesn't. He'll come around."   
“Maybe. Maybe not.” Bucky polishes off his meal, tucking away the container neatly and wrapping it all up in its Styrofoam delivery box. “If not...well, I have what I need. Look…” he shifts, laying a hand on Peter’s shoulder. It’s the first contact Peter thinks they’ve ever had, and it’s Bucky’s metal hand, the material cold through the fabric of Peter’s suit. But he has no desire to flinch away. “It’s hard, okay? I know that. Coming back and trying to be somebody you aren’t. God, I probably know that better than anybody.”   
Peter nods dumbly, unable to speak.   
“But kid…” Bucky grips his shoulder tighter. “The thing is, you don’t have to be the same guy you were. Maybe you’ve changed. Maybe you haven’t. But you don’t owe anybody any damn apologies for that, you understand?”   
Peter nods again.  
He tries to speak, but his throat is hoarse and his voice cracks in the wind.   
Bucky releases him, and steps back, and the raw honesty that was in his eyes only a moment ago fades as the walls come back up. “Good.” He gathers up their trash and prepares to leave. “Give Stark a call or something, okay? He worries. And when he worries, Steve worries. And when Steve worries, I get the brunt of it.”   
Bucky’s covering up for himself now, giving both of them an out from this painfully awkward conversation. Peter nods again, wondering why, for the love of god, he can’t seem to say anything anymore. He swallows tightly and forces himself to look up, to say something, to say anything.   
What comes out is, “Thanks, Bucky.”   
The Winter Soldier nods. Then he’s gone.   
Peter goes home that night with a stomach full of Chinese food and a head spinning. The next morning, he texts Tony on the way to school. It’s a stupid text, something the old Peter might have sent, some internet meme about how all successful business men eventually grow pretentious facial hair. He captions it "this is u" and doesn’t expect a reply.   
But he gets one, less than two minutes after pressing send. It makes a lump form in his throat and he has to close his eyes for a moment before reading it. 

He isn’t sure if he’s even really Spider-Man anymore, but he knows that he isn’t Peter Parker. He isn’t anybody. He doesn’t really have a place in this strange new world, not yet. Sometimes he thinks that he does, but then the silence washes over him again, and it feels cold and foreign, and he knows, just knows, that it was never really supposed to be this way. Something is missing, some vital component that made him Peter Parker, and now he is someone or perhaps something new entirely.  
But. He’s alive.   
Everything is wrong. But there are worse things. At least everything is still there. Everything wrong is okay, as long as there is still an everything left to fix. It was supposed to get easier, and maybe it will, but it’s different, now.   
Peter inhales, and starts again. But there are worse things than starting over.


End file.
